Washington: A US army unit accused of killing innocent Afghan civilians for sport was "out of control," prosecutors said Monday as the ringleader of the so-called "kill team" faced court martial.
Military prosecutor Dan Mazzone said Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, 26 took such pride in his murderous behavior that he had his soldiers pose for photos with the dead, and that he cut off fingers of the victims and kept them as souvenirs.
Gibbs faces a maximum sentence of life in prison over charges including three counts of premeditated murder, in a scandal that has threatened Abu Ghraib-style embarrassment for the US military.
"You're going to learn that this platoon (was) out of control," Mazzone said in an opening statement to Gibbs' court martial, which began on Friday with jury selection.
Gibbs is accused of staging the killings between January and March 2010 to make them look like legitimate combat casualties. If convicted he face a maximum punishment of life in prison without parole.
After allegedly shooting to death a man named Marach Agha, Gibbs warned his platoon medic, Sergeant Robert Stevens, not to breath a word of it.
"Gibbs had the audacity to tell Sergeant Stevens to 'take this to your grave,'" Mazzone said.
In March 2010, Gibbs saw two Afghan men who he claims were carrying rocket-propelled grenade (RPGs) launchers, when in fact it was a shovel.
Gibbs, the prosecutor said, ordered his soldiers to shoot them, but the Afghans managed to flee, to which Gibbs said: "Looks like we're going to have to work on our target practice."
Inside the tiny courtroom Gibbs, wearing a dress uniform, sat silently and expressionless.
The prosecutor claimed that the defense will argue that Gibbs was part of a team of "choirboys and angels ... Well, choirboys and angels do not commit crimes like this," said Mazzone.
The trial is expected to last a week, with some 30 witnesses slated to testify.
Chief prosecution witness Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 24 -- described as Gibbs' "right hand man" -- was due to be the first witness called to the stand to testify Monday.
Gibbs' lawyers on Friday entered not guilty pleas to all 16 charges at the beginning of the day's proceedings at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which started with selection of a jury to hear the week-long case.
Three of the other "kill-team" members have agreed to testify against Gibbs: Morlock, Specialist Adam Winfield, and Specialist Michael Wagnon.
Gibbs is the fourth "kill team" member to face a court-martial for his alleged actions in the southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan between January and May of 2010.
In March, Morlock, 23, pled guilty to the killings and to using stolen weapons to pretend the victims were enemy fighters. He was jailed for 24 years and dishonorably discharged, but avoided life in prison.
In August, Winfield, 23, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter and illegal use of marijuana.
Then in September, Private First Class Andrew Holmes, 21, was jailed for seven years in a plea agreement to avoid a 15-year term. A fifth soldier, Wagnon, is still awaiting military trial for his alleged role in the killings.
The German news magazine Der Spiegel published three grisly pictures in March, out of a reported cache of 4,000 documents, showing Morlock and Holmes holding up the bloodied head of a corpse.
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